Scaling up connectomics at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology – from the first vertebrate connectomes to the mouse and beyond
Lead Research Organisation:
MRC LABORATORY OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Department Name: UNLISTED
Abstract
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Technical Summary
What is the physical basis of memory? How do brains change during disease or injury? Could we
make better AI by learning from brains? Answers would have huge scientific and societal impacts, but
the brain is very complex. We now propose something conceptually simple but technologically
challenging: obtaining the structure of complete vertebrate and mammalian brains and using this to
reveal their algorithms. We see a time-critical opportunity to regain the UK’s leadership and to drive
the field into new territory that, with investment, we at the LMB are ready to explore. We have
identified four aims: 1) Reveal the changes that enable Drosophila to learn and remember. 2)
Organisation of more complex insect brains. 3) Reveal the conserved architecture of the vertebrate
brain. 4) Reveal mouse subcortical areas for sensorimotor-processing. We ask for a capital
investment to obtain essential equipment, of which the centrepiece is the UK’s first multibeam
SEM instrument for orders of magnitude faster data collection.
make better AI by learning from brains? Answers would have huge scientific and societal impacts, but
the brain is very complex. We now propose something conceptually simple but technologically
challenging: obtaining the structure of complete vertebrate and mammalian brains and using this to
reveal their algorithms. We see a time-critical opportunity to regain the UK’s leadership and to drive
the field into new territory that, with investment, we at the LMB are ready to explore. We have
identified four aims: 1) Reveal the changes that enable Drosophila to learn and remember. 2)
Organisation of more complex insect brains. 3) Reveal the conserved architecture of the vertebrate
brain. 4) Reveal mouse subcortical areas for sensorimotor-processing. We ask for a capital
investment to obtain essential equipment, of which the centrepiece is the UK’s first multibeam
SEM instrument for orders of magnitude faster data collection.
